THERESE EDELL IN SOLO CONCERT

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Therese Edell is one of those remarkable performers who can reach out in a very inforinal and genuine way to cach member of her audience. Immediately one has the sense of having known her for a long time. Listening to her music and the casual, yet intimate manner in which she speaks about her music, her friends, and herself, one doesn't really feel like part of a "concert audience”—it's more like sitting around the home of an old friend, sharing good music, good talk and good times.

Therese first captured the admiration of Cleveland women a year ago last April with her dynamic appearance as the opening act for Willie Tyson. On Saturday night, June 9th, the capacity crowd on hand at the Unitarian Church was treated to an entire evening with Therese Edell and her sometimes humorous, sometimes touching, always powerful and always moving music.

She opened the evening with two songs, My Freest Fancy, by Judy Mahan, and Alix Dobkin's A Woman's Love, that touched the audience and held them spellbound. There were several cuts from her album, From Women's Faces, such as Emma, Phoenix, Tuke Back the Guns, Lou's Song and Mama Let Your Children Go. The audience responded loudly and energetically, with many women joining in on their favorite numbers. There were also

songs written by the women with whom Therese works in Cincinnati and on tour and several Annie Dinerman composition.

In between songs, and sometimes during the lighter ones, Therese would integrate conversation and jokes, as well as answer questions from the audience. Her easy-going manner encouraged people to speak

up and join in the banter, making for a lively and good-natured exchange between audience and performer in a totally relaxed atmosphere.

Therese Edell differs from some feminist performers who insist on performing material exclusively by women. Including a number of contemporary

Izquierda Sings Quiet Thunder

Izquierda is a group of five women who have come together in Oregon to explore music and "the dimensions of being woman, alive today." They are Izetta Smith, originally from New York; Kristen Aspen, from Central Washington; Naomi Martinez Littlebear, from southern California; Robin Chilstrom, a native Oregonian; and Cleveland's own June Adams, who joined the group this past winter. June was active in women's music here and, in addition to writing and performing her own music, organized the Cleveland Women's Choir which made its debut at Oven's Annual Variety Show this February.

In 1977 Izquierda was invited to perform at both the National Women's Music Festival in Champaign, Illinois and the Michigan Women's Music Festival in Hysperia. Their first national tour was in 1978, after return appearances at both festivals. They were again scen at the National Women's Music Festival this June.

Their newly released album is called Quiet Thunder, a title which is most fitting. The album is one of those surprises that sneaks up on you after about the second or third listening when suddenly you are pulled into the subtle beauty and strength of their music. Not all of the cuts on this record are "grabbers"-and the style of the numbers is very different at times so that it is possible to love some numbers and never quite reach an affinity with others. The group is young and may still be exploring which directions they wish to move in, but for the time being they have come up with some interesting and intricate harmonies, blending voices and guitar,

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Notes to "Rebel Girl"'/Gene Richmond piano, flute, and percussion, that make the album well worth having.

Although they experiment with some unusual instrumental and vocal effects on some cuts, Izquierda's strength for now lies in their more straight-forward vocal arrangements, where the main ingredient is the subtle blending of voices. Numbers such as Price of Freedom, with its skillful integration of voices and instrumentation; Don't Take Her Love, with its upbeat energy and joy; and Special Friends, which combines a feeling of jazz with a

Page 6/What She Wants/July, 1979.

Latino flavor, provide a special kind of energy and "lift".

June's arrangements and accompaniment are featured on Hearts of Silver and Like a Mountain. The first is an instrumental that follows the rhythms of birds in flight and at rest. It is in this number that the "thunder" comes home quietly-you can't say why exactly, but there's something very satisfying about what you are experiencing. June's work on the latter number moves the message of the song forward as an integral and essential component.

songs written by men, she explained that what she looks for in a song is whether or not it has something significant to say to women, some way that it can be related to a woman's experience. Her presentation of these songs, as well as her others, clearly showed the care with which she had worked through them, add. ing her own sense of herstory and personal ex perience, to make the music and the message "her own".

There were serious moments, particularly during Take Back the Guns, when she became so overwhelmed by the subject and her feelings poured out in the introduction that she had to pause for a moment to regain herself. Perhaps even more than her music, that single moment touched everyone there-that glimpse into the intensity and the caring of the woman that sometimes gets lost in the presentation of other performers.

Although used to performing with Betsy Lippet and Louise Anderson, Therese's solo accompaniment was first-rate. If she felt something or someone was missing in those moments when she wanted to say "Take it" for an instrumental spot (only no one else was there), she was probably one of the few present who noticed a difference. For the women in the audience, for those of us who waited a year to see this woman and hear her perform once again—just having Therese Edell by herself was enough!

Deb Adler

Naomi Littlebear's lyrics choose to accent the positive aspects of a woman's life and love. Her words aren't really "earth-shattering”—just comfortable, soothing-and once in a while, that's a good way to be. It will be interesting to see what directions Izquierda takes from here. They've made a good start, and their music and their album Quiet Thunder are worth experiencing.

-Deb Adler

[ \Quiet Thunder is available at Coventry Books,

Marian McPartland: "Piano Jazz”

Every Tuesday evening, 10 to 11 p.m., on WKSU radio (89.7 FM from Kent State University), jazz pianist Marian McPartland produces and hosts a program called "Piano Jazz". Each week she discusses and performs jazz with one invited guest. On two recent programs her guests have been pianists Joanne Brackene and Mary Lou Williams.

Marian McPartland was born in Windsor, England in 1920. She began her music I career playing popular music to entertain British troops during World War II. In 1946 she came to the U.S. to form a traditional jazz combo with her cornetist husband Jimmy McPartland. She separated froin Jimmy in 1951 to form her own trio and soon attained a solid reputation in New York City and Chicago as an in-

Clio's Musings

On July 19 and 20, 1848, the First Women's Rights Convention was held at the Wesleyan Chapel at Seneca Falls, New York. It consisted of such women as Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and men like James Mott and Frederick Douglass. During the proceedings, fifteen resolutions protesting the degradation and oppression of women in politics, religion, economics, family, property, work, law and customs were unanimously passed, with one exception: the right to vote passed only by a narrow margin. A battle raged between those who feared ridicule for demanding the right to vote and those who saw voting as the way to accomplish the other resolutions.

In light of the contemporary nature of the resolutions and the snail's-pace progress of the ERA, Clio

novative and exciting performer.

Not limiting herself to performing. Marian McPartland had excelled as a composer (awardwinning documentary film sound tracks included); she has served on jazz organizations and on arts councils; she has distinguished herself as a jazz disc jockey and a journalist; she has taught both in college jazz clinics and in inner-city Washington, D.C. public schools; and since 1969 has operated her own jazz record company (Halcyon Records, Box 4255 Grand Central Station, New York City 10017). At the present time she is compiling a comprehensive book on the history of women in jazz.

-Gene Richmond

by Paula Copestick

wonders if the fact that a laundroinat now stands on the site of this historic meeting is indicative of women's place in our socicty 131 years later.

On July 4, 1876 in Toledo, Ohio, the Women's Suffrage Association boycotted the Centennial celebrations. They stayed at home while the entire parade passed under a huge banner the women had stretched across the main street, which read: "Woman Suffrage and Equal Rights”.

Rossi, Alice S., cd. The Feminist Papers. Columbia University Press (New York, 1973), pp. 413-421. Sherr, Lynn and Kazickas, Jurate. The American Woman's Gazetteer. Bantam Books (New York, 1976). p. 135.